There are various ways to approach a new design. From hand sketches, to model building, collages, photography, 3D modeling, etc. Architects learn to become inspired and use various medias to convey their ideas. One growing example of an approach is parametric modeling. With computer technology gaining speed, parametric design features parameters within a program, such as Grasshopper, to clarify and encode relationships between elements.

Designing with many iterative shapes makes parametric modeling a useful tool. It allows for quick manipulation to a specific design. Factors that may call for change and response include zoning heights and setbacks, natural daylight, shading, structural frame, floor areas, etc. All this can be instantly manipulated with a change of a number in the code script. With many factors having an impact on several iterations until coming up with the product of a final design, parametric modelling uses time efficiently to make these changes to the interior, exterior, and detailing. Therefore, designers can go through more options with a client in an efficient time period.

As a student, what fascinates me the most with parametric modelling is the form you’re able to achieve. While most modern architecture is represented with flat planes or rectangular forms, parametric modelling can create curved, manipulated, and twisting shapes appealing to speculate by the eye. A studied example in which parametric modelling was utilized are the Al Bahar Towers in Abu Dhabi. Aedas Architects were able to utilize parametric script to design the towers’ responsive façade screens. With the location’s direct sunlight, a sustainable approach was taken to create kinetic screens to self-move and respond to the sun exposure at various times/days of the year. In return, this provides more shade to cool the interior and eliminate unnecessary HVAC use. The individual iterative shape of the screens themselves were derived from the “mashrabiya” which is a local traditional Islamic lattice. Here, parametric modelling became a solution to combine culture with sustainability and design.

Learning Curve is an ongoing series from the perspective of our interning students who are currently in school to become the world’s next generation of designers.

This edition is by Anastasia Spassennikova who is in her first year of the Master of Architecture program at the University of Washington. With a love for both math and art, architecture felt like the obvious path that would meld the two into one exciting career. Her passion for the profession grew when she realized it was a gateway to learning about people and locations in various contexts. Designing a building for a specific client allows the designer to learn more about that individual's background and interests which makes every project unique. With the rare extra time outside of her studies, Anastasia enjoys exploring the world around her through drawing, painting and actively travelling to see things first hand

You know when you travel to a place and everyone always craves the “local” experience? Well if you want that, my first suggestion for you would be to visit Morocco. It’s hard not to see and experience the day to day life of locals in the old medinas of Morocco. The old medinas are the ultimate transformation of space. Before 10am and after 8pm the storefronts are closed and streets are for the most part empty (other than your local gang of cats). During the day the streets lined with doors become lines of shops spilling out onto the streets. Now you’re dodging either the donkey and cart or the man speaking French to you trying to sell you Aragon oil or black soap. The old medinas are where Moroccans spend their days buying, selling, eating, socializing, and of course drinking mint tea.

Opposing the streets are lush interiors containing courtyards filled with plants, intricacies of plaster hand carvings, and tile work. You’d find this type of detail not only in Mosques and palaces, but in buildings like the airport and train station.

The Yves Saint Laurent museum in Marrakech, designed by Studio kO, was one of the few “modern” buildings we saw in Morocco. Its appearance was out of simple masonry that transformed into a lightweight, delicate material exploring new patterns and defying gravity with an upward sloping curve.

The last stop was to Dubai for a wedding. Most of our time was spent visiting and celebrating with college friends, and not a lot of time for sightseeing. And yes, we were awe struck by the mammoth that was the Burj Khalifa, but it was the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi that I will dream about for years to come. Abu Dhabi is a city that is built on multiple islands and connected with bridges, so a building nestled in the water along with the mangroves only seems natural right? The museum is contained within a series of buildings all being protected by the layers of structure creating the massive dome above. All of the supporting structure of the dome is hidden from the perspective of viewers making it appear to be floating regardless of where you were in the museum. We learned from a friend of Sultan’s, who worked at the Louvre, that the structure is meant to resemble stars and in the morning the light would beam through the dome creating changing patterns on the ground, buildings and water surface. The overall experience was dreamlike.

Inspiration Abroad is an ongoing series from the travels and explorations of the team at ATELIER DROME team and the things that inspire, delight and invigorate.

This inspirational edition is by designer Cassie Lang, a Washington native who loves getting outdoors, exploring the world and it was through the search for balance between art and math that she found herself falling in love with architecture where the two blended perfectly. Read more about Cassie in her bio.

Throughout the past few years in architecture school, a major topic of design that professors proposed is how can we design sustainably? Since buildings account for 46% of total carbon dioxide emissions, and 75% of total electrical use, we as architects are responsible for creative integrative system design solutions to ensure a more positive environmental impact. One approach can be the use of energy production components as both an energy system and a visual characteristic for a building.

A unique example includes the New Blauhaus’ that was recently completed in 2015. In its translation from German, the “New Blue House” provides a more contemporary version of bringing the public, education, and science sector together with the energy industry. The project is situated on the campus of Hochschule Niederrhein, University of Applied Sciences in Krefeld, Germany. It grew to be a collaboration between the school and NEW- an energy and water utility company to showcase the groundbreaking developments in the energy sector.

The displayed low-resource energy system of photovoltaic panels not only brings out the sculptural quality of oppositely inclined surfaces varying between these PV panels and blue-tinged glass panel, but also performs as a low-resource energy system. The panels are arranged to perfectly cooperate with the orientation and frequency of solar radiation hitting the site and cover the full energy demand to power the building to make it carbon neutral. Stepping aside at a distance, these panels become integrated with the architecture to give form to the New Blue House as a sculptural gem.

Learning Curve is an ongoing series from the perspective of our interning students who are currently in school to become the world’s next generation of designers.

This edition is by Anastasia Spassennikova who is in her first year of the Master of Architecture program at the University of Washington. With a love for both math and art, architecture felt like the obvious path that would meld the two into one exciting career. Her passion for the profession grew when she realized it was a gateway to learning about people and locations in various contexts. Designing a building for a specific client allows the designer to learn more about that individual's background and interests which makes every project unique. With the rare extra time outside of her studies, Anastasia enjoys exploring the world around her through drawing, painting and actively travelling to see things first hand.

We are excited to host artist Kyle Cook and his new collection, "Excavated Landscapes" in our gallery space from February 1 - March 31. We also had the pleasure of working with the artist on the design of his studio which you can read more about on our Artist's Studio project page.

Show Statement

I believe the experience of the sublime in nature is a result of a multitude of emotions, truths, and stories being unearthed and simultaneously grappled with in our consciousness. Though we still feel small and powerless in relation to the forces of nature–its vastness and unpredictability–nature also mirrors back the tremendous power we have in reshaping and impacting the environment, climate, people, cultures, and wildlife. My interactions with the landscape are both a space for reflection and a catalyst for my imagination.

This body of work aims to depict its own creation, and I strive to deliver a moment in the process where the work feels independent, unfamiliar, and beyond my preconceptions. I begin with a series of gestural, automatic marks and diagrammatic lines, which establish a spatial framework that allows for painting and drawing to allude to, describe, and construct real and imagined forms in an envelope of atmosphere and light.

I’m continually questioning where forms and ideas exist on a spectrum between realism and abstraction; this often leads to the development of motifs, such as scaffold-like constructions, fishing nets, carbon dust-clouds, and geometric lines, many of which symbolize human impact and manipulation of the environment. Additionally, the creation of realistic works informs my understanding of space, scale and color . Much as the light or weather shifts, our relationship to the landscape is not fixed. I hope these paintings generate unique experiences of an environment that is layered and dynamic–altered, excavated and reimagined.

Kyle Cook + Atelier Drome

To let your eyes journey through one of Kyle Cook’s paintings is to venture on a transcendent tour of the impact nature has on our senses. When we first experienced Kyle’s work, we were struck by the sense of awe encapsulated within –– to look at them made us feel small, the same smallness that overcomes us when we take in nature’s wonders with our own eyes. But the process and vision behind Kyle’s brushstrokes take the work further, beyond an interpretation or retelling of that which remains unspoiled in our environment.

These pieces transpose the elements of form, line, color, and space to a point where they take on the singularity of a moment, one beyond the familiar, beyond –– as Kyle puts it ––preconceptions, and wholly independent. And in doing so, they share with us the skill and awareness of an artist in touch not only with the process that allows for vision to be effectively captured on canvas, but of how we have affected nature.

“I’m continually questioning where forms and ideas exist on a spectrum between realism and abstraction; this often leads to the development of motifs … many of which symbolize human impact and manipulation of the environment,” Kyle notes. This is an impact clearly seen in the straight lines and angles incorporated into some of the pieces, often as splashes of color, and one that for us at Atelier Drome resonated with how we are tasked with imposing our own constructed beauty and function in a space that nature holds. It speaks to the balance we all try to achieve in our work and in our lives, a balance that can be hectic to achieve, but one that nature, ultimately, created effortlessly.

Images below are from his opening reception during the First Thursday Pioneer Square Art Walk on February 1st.

in our space this quarter from October through January. The opening reception for her latest new collection, "Piercing the Infinite Sky," will be during October's First Thursday Art Walk on Thursday, October 5th from 5pm - 8pm.

I regard the mountains as stoic icons reflected by mortality, records of the movements of the earth and the torrents of the sky. They represent a collision, or maybe, a collaboration of the elements and forces of life. Though continuously rising or falling, the mountains stand, silent, weighing on the shifting fragments of the earth, moving at an incomprehensible rate.

In these works, I depict geological disruptions, carved moments and parts within the landscape. Records of denudation captivate me, as these notes present a segmented image of the whole. Mountaintops stand crisp against a stark white, reaching for an infinite sky. Descending are scratched lines, which break through the slopes, while flecks of white dapple eroded surfaces, recalling cooler seasons. These finished pieces linger on the threshold of completion, for what memory is complete upon its conception? The image often disintegrates as it nears the base of the painting, referencing the deposition of mountain and mythos.

I approached these white panels with turbulent, yet restrained mark making. Mixing oil paint above and across graphite marks, I soften or exaggerate the contours of the landscape. In some areas, the imagery holds, stable, while across the scene, a moment of textural play denotes action, erosion or sliding, moving away from the sky, down to the chaotic base. My paintings depict the tranquility of nature, while whispering of unpredictably and grandeur far beyond human conception or control.

As the threats of a changing climate are reawaken our terror of the Sublime, we fear the loss of human constructs within the false façade of permanence. We are reminded, to Nature, the individual is irrelevant, lost to the vastness and susceptible to the ephemerality of being.

Here at Atelier Drome, part of the regular design process involves creating a board of inspiration images which means we are always on the look out for new ways of using materials to create beautiful spaces and structures as well as solve design issues. Sometimes the difference between creating something truly unique that fits the character of the space does't involve the use of new and advanced materials but rather using an otherwise ordinary material in an extraordinary way to create an entirely new experience.

For a residential building in Tehran, the material of choice for Admun Studio is brick which is a typical material used throughout Iran. The design team was brought on after the structure itself was completed and they were left to resolve several issues through the design of the façade. They describe the need to “provide maximum privacy yet fulfilling other features such as moderating light, limiting view from outside, organizing chaotic experience of the terraces and decreasing high-traffic neighborhood noise” that lead them to the artistic design of a modulating textural surface. Using these simple materials in a new way, the surface not only solves several issues at once but creates a unique visual piece in the neighborhood

Repetition is often the key to creating what looks like a new material by way of using a simple smaller piece multiple times that is then transformed into a larger surface structure. In Japan, Kengo Kuma& Associates did just that with a Starbucks location. The design sought to marry a new, modern space with the surrounding design aesthetic of traditional Japanese structures by using “a unique system of weaving thin woods diagonally.” The result is not only unique but creates kind of a vortex that feels as though it wants to suck the passerby into the café and possesses that dynamic energy that goes beyond just creating visual cues or leading lines intended to draw people inside.

In Spain, the simple material of wooden sticks is used as well but takes on an entirely different character designed by Ideo Arquitectura. This time, the surface takes on a softer feel as the ceiling of a bakery that is in a long narrow space lined with old, exposed brick that would otherwise feel like a dark cave. Instead, the sculptural ceiling guides visitors in and creates an almost glittering surface and reinforces the overall brand of the shop while creating visual interested that works with the highly textural existing walls without clashing or completely dominating them.